His study and classification went on for several years before it
occurred to him that there was one kind of face that he never saw--one
type that he never found in all the Manhattan crowds. When he had first
discovered that this face was missing he had called it "the good face;"
and though he realized the insufficiency of this designation he could
not think of a better, and the term stuck. It was not that he never saw
faces with good qualities stamped upon them: he sometimes saw faces
marked with benevolence, honesty and resolution, for example, and these
were all good faces in a way. But they were not what Mr. Neal was
looking for--what he searched for more intently with the passing months.
He remembered the face of his own mother dimly through the years; it was
a little like what he wanted to see here in the subway. He searched for
simplicity, for transparent truth, for depth of spirituality, for meek
strength and gentle power. But simplicity in the subway? Guileless
transparency of any sort? Spirituality? Mockery!
The face he never saw became an obsession with Mr. Neal. He hunted for
it in various parts of the city. He tried the Broadway line of the
subway where the faces are notably pleasanter, more prosperous, and
smugger. But neither there nor about the Universities on Morningside
Heights and on the banks of the Harlem, nor in Brooklyn, nor anywhere he
looked, did he find the face he sought.
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